One of my projects involves changes to text files and quite often recycle of the application pool. Generally this means going the long way of opening the IIS Manager, going to the application pool node, right clicking on the app pool and selecting recycle, but there is a quicker way. You can create a shortcut in the quick launch area of the task bar that recycles a specific application pool.

To do this.

  1. Right click in the quick launch area and select open folder.
  2. Right click in Windows Explorer that pops up and select New > Shortcut.
  3. Select appcmd.exe in the C:\Windows\System32\inetsrv\ folder (or whatever your system folder is) and click Next.
  4. You can name is whatever you like.
  5. Once the shortcut is created, right click on it and click Properties.
  6. Go to the “Shortcut” tab and replace the “Target” with the following, replace AppPoolName with the name of the appropriate application pool:
    C:\Windows\System32\inetsrv\appcmd.exe recycle apppool /apppool.name:AppPoolName
  7. Optional: If your user doesn’t have administrative rights then click the “Advanced” button and check “Run as Administrator.”
  8. Click OK.

From now on app pool recycling is down to one easily accessible click away!

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